27 Facts About Ken Penders

Archie sued Ken Penders to retain the rights, but ultimately lost them, and in 2013 rebooted the Sonic comic to remove many comic-original characters.

Ken Penders attempted to sue Sega and EA Games in 2011, for alleged plagiarism of his "Dark Legion" concept in the 2008 video game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, but was dismissed.

In 2010, Ken Penders announced The Lara-Su Chronicles, a graphic novel series that would continue his "Mobius: 25 Years Later" storyline using these characters.

Ken Penders was hired to work on the latter at the request of regular Star Trek author Robert Greenberger.

Ken Penders accepted a contract illustrating for DC's Captain Atom series, after being selected as a finalist in a comic book drawing contest sponsored by Marvel Comics in 1989 and agreeing to visit weekly seminars.

Ken Penders was hired to work on the comic series Sonic the Hedgehog, published by Archie Comics, early into the comic's run in 1993.

Ken Penders served as lead writer for much of the series' early life until he switched focus to working on side-series Knuckles the Echidna, which ran from 1997 until being cancelled due to poor sales in 1999.

Outside of the comic, Ken Penders illustrated the cover of the complete series DVD set of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Ken Penders created his own original comic IP for Image in the early 2000s, The Lost Ones, releasing a single issue before it was cancelled.

Ken Penders has worked in other media, including producing children's activity books and creating graphics for CD-ROM games.

Ken Penders has credits for storyboards on two episodes of King of the Hill, and created concept art for advertisements for the Motorola Razr.

Ken Penders created four pieces of concept art and a homemade pitch video, but the project never materialised due to the death of Leffer and what Penders described as "massive corporate upheaval" at Sega sometime in 2007.

In July 2010, after the US Copyright Office had certified his claims over his work for the Sonic the Hedgehog Archie series, Ken Penders announced his intentions to continue the story of Lara-Su, one of his original characters created for Sonic and the in-universe daughter of Knuckles the Echidna, along with the other echidna characters he had created for the Archie comic.

In December 2011, Ken Penders announced the continuation would be in the form of a graphic novel series, entitled The Lara-Su Chronicles.

Ken Penders stated that the series shares the same starting point with his Sonic Armageddon pitch, beginning with the planet Mobius exploding.

On March 5,2014, Ken Penders announced on his Twitter account that his characters were no longer echidna but Echyd'nya, an alien species.

Ken Penders stated reasons for the change were that he needed to make some adjustments to broaden the audience, that he wanted to give longtime fans answers and resolution, and because of the apparent difficulty he has seen with people pronouncing the word "echidna".

Ken Penders stated in a later interview that his goals with The Lara-Su Chronicles are to "[inspire] the next generation to do their own thing as opposed to playing in someone else's sandbox" and sees an effort to finish what he began with "Mobius: 25 Years Later".

In January 2009, three years after leaving Archie Comics, Ken Penders began filing for copyright of every story, character, and artwork that he had created for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic series and its spin-offs, with the claims certified as of April 2010 by the US Copyright Office.

Ken Penders had been prompted to do so after fans of his had contacted him asking if he had anything to do with the release of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which he did not; Penders alleged the game used concepts and characters similar to those he had written for the comic series.

However, the only copy of this contract that Archie could produce for the court was a photocopy, which Ken Penders claimed was a forgery; the reproduced nature of the photocopy meant that its validity could be questioned.

In 2013, the lawsuit ended with prejudice, with Ken Penders gaining the rights to an estimated over 200 characters from the comic in a confidential settlement with Archie Comics.

Ken Penders filed a lawsuit against Sega and EA Games in 2011 for alleged copyright infringement in the game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which was developed by EA's subsidiary BioWare.

In particular, Ken Penders claimed the game had stolen the concept of Nocturnus Clan from his own Dark Legion, along with many other concepts from the Knuckles the Echidna spin-off series he had written; something brought to his attention after fans of his asked if he worked on the game based on the similarities.

In October 2015, Ken Penders made a post to his Twitter some interpreted to be directed at Archie Comics, about comic publishers not "believ[ing] in living up to their side of the bargain", and to not "blame [him] for what happens next"; the tweet was believed to be in response to planned reprints by Archie.

Ken Penders took to Twitter to state that he believed the character in the film to be a version of Locke, and that he believed another echidna in the film to be another character of his, Enerjak.

The outcome of the Archie lawsuit meant that hundreds of characters created by former Archie contractors were removed from the Sonic canon, something that Ken Penders recognizes upset fans, but has stated was a decision made by Archie rather than himself.